The Reject Report: This Weekend Promises to be Legendary

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on December 14, 2007

Welcome to what is sure to be an entertaining Reject Report. This week, I am sounding a heck of a lot like Barney from the TV show How I Met Your Mother. Because this week promises to be— wait for it— legendary.

That’s right, this is the week former TV star Will Smith of Fresh Prince of Bel Air fame turns up on screen again in the much-anticipated I Am Legend. Unfortunately, this is also the week we get TV star Jason Lee of My Name is Earl fame in Alvin and the Chipmunks. So this weekend promises not to be so legendary after all — for one movie at least.

Here’s a look at the latest box office contenders.

I Am Legend is the latest screen adaptation of the 1954 Richard Matheson novel of the same name. The others that made the big screen were 1964’s The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price, and 1971’s The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston. In this one, Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, the sole survivor of a virus that wiped out pretty much the entire world’s population. He scrambles for survival in a barren New York City with his trusted canine companion, and searches for a cure to this virus before all these mutants hunt him down and kill him.

My thought on hearing about the plot is to say: “right on, a zombie movie!” I definitely plan to see this one.

This movie has already been promoted to death for months on end. I imagine this is one flick likely to survive the Writers Strike wipeout of late night television, which has made it pretty much impossible for big stars to promote their movies to the public. Anyway, I am going to say this movie makes about $47 million — lower than some estimates — because I just think this writers’ strike is going to have an impact. Also, where I live the weather is TERRIBLE right now, and that’s bound to affect things in the portion of the USA that is regularly hit by winter storms. If the weather is bad, the box office will suffer.

But this movie is still going to do excellent business no matter what. I Am Legend is showing on 3,606 screens and is a Warner Bros. release.

Next is Alvin and the Chipmunks and it’s out just in time for Christmas. A fun fact about the Chipmunks: the original Alvin and the Chipmunks group actually shot to fame by releasing a record at Christmastime called the Christmas Song. And it was a big hit in 1958. In fact, it was Number One. Now they figure they can release a Number One movie at Christmas almost 50 years later. This one stars Jason Lee as the Chipmunks’ famous manager David Seville. As for the Chipmunks, these high-pitched creatures are back as CGI-generated punks. At least, that’s what they looked like on their movie posters! The movie is basically about the Chipmunks and their rise to fame.

I dunno if I am looking forward to seeing this one. This sure looks similar to that terrible Josie and the Pussycats movie that was a complete disaster a few years ago. They could have made a great, campy movie based on those sexy Saturday morning TV babes, and they completely screwed it up by turning those three chicks into bad imitations of the Spice Girls. I worry these Chipmunks are going to be ruined in similar fashion. I hope the guys at 20th Century Fox are able to do better, at least, with Alvin.

The one thing this Alvin movie has going for it is the fact that their Saturday morning cartoon show, the one that ran for years on NBC in the Eighties, was TERRIBLE. So this movie is bound to be a big improvement on that.

I say $17 mil for these high-pitched Chipmunks, who will be haunting 3,475 theaters this weekend— including one near you. I sure hope Jason Lee’s career survives this impending embarrassment of a movie.

Finally, there is one new release that just came out on Wednesday. It’s called A Perfect Holiday and it’s in 1,307 theaters. It stars Gabrielle Union as a single mom looking for love at Christmas, and she meets this department store Santa played by Morris Chestnut. And things start to happen.

But based on Wednesday totals it ain’t happening at the box office! Box Office Mojo said this flick only made $385,000! So this movie isn’t going to do very well this weekend; probably a mid-pack finish. I would say $4,500,000 for this one.

So here is how I see things going at the box office:

By the way, Oscar contender Atonement goes into 117 theaters and has an outside shot at a Top Ten finish if they do the kind of business they did last week.

That’s all for now. See you at the end of the weekend when we go over the damages here at THE REJECT REPORT!

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